The Huicholes, an Occult Culture Glimpsed Through Art
By Heather Wilson
Summer-Fall 2005

Having just learned to read and write at school, a son returns home eager to teach his shaman father what he now considers vital skills. But the octogenarian has zero interest, explaining: “Why would I want to read and write when I already talk to God and he tells me everything!”

This anecdote reflects the push-pull of the modern world on one of the planet’s few remaining unassimilated peoples, an estimated 15,000 nature worshipers with feet firmly planted in both this world and the spirit realm, and the only one of Mexico’s 56 indigenous groups refusing to convert to Catholicism. Tenaciously guarding their way of life, for more than 200 years they managed to evade the Spanish conquerors by retreating ever deeper into this region’s mountains. Yet today, about half their young people are leaving their villages to attend school. “Because they get homesick, maybe only half finish,” says Kevin Simpson, owner of El Centro’s fair-trade cooperative, Peyote People, and a frequent visitor to Huichol territory. “But of those that do, about 50 percent never return. It’s tough up there.”

His relationship with the Wiraxica (what they call themselves) began in 1997. “I was walking on a street so quiet you could roll a cannonball down it, when I saw a Huichol couple with a little blue suitcase sitting on a corner. I asked what they were doing there, since it was Christmas Day, and the man responded, “What’s that?” So I invited them back to my house and bought a bunch of their masks, putting them on my walls. Lots of people asked about them, so when I later opened a little store and didn’t have a lot of inventory I brought them in, and they sold quickly.”

And these days, Vallarta offers what is probably the nicest selection of shops and galleries anywhere showcasing their distinctive yarn and bead art, its symbolic motifs glances into their secretive society. If not for what we delightedly discern from their artistic manifestations, most of us would remain completely in the dark about their less-than-forthcoming culture. “Reverse tongue,” where day is night and light is dark and so on, confuses those threatening their privacy. And eye contact is rare. The eyes considered doors, they believe a shaman is able to enter your dreams only because he has looked right through you.

Most are farmers growing beans, squash, and five colors of corn – red, white, blue, orange and a spotted mix – from which taquino is made, a traditional alcohol drunk from squash gourds.

Yet in Vallarta, you hear “Huichol” and think “art.” But according to Simpson, only about 15 percent make it commercially, “especially in the time leading up to ceremonies, when individual families use the money they earn to buy cattle for offerings.”

And while the introduction of money into the community is a double-edged sword, frequently arousing jealousy, it is slowly enhancing their standard of living, buying a metal grinder for the corn, for example, making day-to-day subsistence a little less arduous. And it builds more solid homes, better protection from the elements. The downside is that the Huicholes are traditionally nomadic, based on hunting and planting patterns. Just last year the government introduced electricity, and gas cylinders are beginning to appear, gas stoves meaning less clear cutting of the forest. And today, a few even have phones, fridges and televisions, while traditional healing is increasingly complemented by Western medicine, including life-saving scorpion antidote.

In Vallarta, the Huicholes you see are making or selling art, usually male, and instantly recognizable by their distinctive dress, a richly embroidered white manta tunic and pants, often worn with an embroidered shoulder bag and tasseled hat, while the women wear vividly colorful, long flowing skirts with waist-cropped tops and large headscarves.

Serious collectors and spontaneous shoppers alike are snapping up their work, a wonderful vehicle for visually exploring the sacred stories this pre-Columbian people has lived by for centuries. Not all Huichol art is sacred art, however, most of what is sold today commercial art depicting spiritual motifs. What distinguishes sacred art is that it is always ritually consecrated and created to petition god, containing what is sought. A prayer bowl containing a coin, a seed and a deer fetish a request for more money and a good crop and hunt.